‘Next!’ she snarled as we made it to the top of the queue, and then she caught sight of me and smiled-a sight so rare that the executives now helping themselves to sugar stared in disbelief.

‘Back again, cara?’ she called, banging out old coffee grounds from the espresso machine. ‘Your usual?’

‘Yes, thanks, Lucia.’ I smiled back at her, and then glanced at Phin, who was watching me with an oddly arrested expression. ‘And…?’ I prompted him.

‘Americano for me,’ he supplied quickly, before Lucia got impatient with him. ‘No milk.’

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ I asked Phin as I slid onto a shiny plastic banquette. Otto’s wasn’t big on style.

‘I’m curious,’ he said, transferring the cups to the table and pushing the tray aside.

‘Curious?’

‘Perhaps intrigued is a better word,’ said Phin. ‘You know, I’ve dodged guerrillas in South America, I’ve been charged at by a rhino and dangled by a rope over a thousand-foot crevasse, but I found Lucia pretty scary. She had every single person in that queue intimidated, but you she calls cara. What’s that about?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ I said, making patterns in the cappuccino froth with my teaspoon. ‘I wrote her a note once, that was all.’

‘What sort of note?’

‘I noticed that she wasn’t here one day, mainly because the queue doesn’t move nearly as fast when she’s not around. I asked why not, and she told me she’d had to go back to Italy because her father had died. I wrote her a short note, just to say that I was sorry. It wasn’t a big deal,’ I muttered. I was rather embarrassed by the way Lucia had never forgotten it.

Phin looked at me thoughtfully. ‘That was a kind thing to do.’

Feeling awkward, I sipped at my coffee. ‘I didn’t do much,’ I said. ‘Anyone can write a note.’